Anomaly
by subdivided
Summary: Grenz was an anomaly. [OC, character sketch x political commentary x science fiction speculation, sardonic humor]


Title: Anomaly  
Series: Legend of the Galactic Heroes  
Genre: Bad science fiction with political overtones

LOGH fans, before/if you read this I must warn you: THERE ARE NO RECOGNIZABLE CHARACTERS HERE. Only original. Also, I made stuff up.

Grenz was an anomaly. Less than a week by military frigate from Neu Sansoucci, it was astronomically in the heart of the Galactic Empire; however the difficulty of rendering it inhabitable had left it undeveloped for most of Imperial history. It wasn't until 378 Imperial and the invention of atomic-level heat exchangers that Grenz was classified as a possession of the Empire. It is said that Emperor Otto VII's penultimate act was signing the order to transform it from a molten lump of glass into a human-inhabitable planet, and that his last was act was proclaiming a weeklong feast in celebration. (Otto VII died of liver failure.)

As if to make up for their newness, Grenz's High Nobles consumed more exotic delicacies, patronized more art, produced more bastard offspring, and in short were responsible for more popular discontent in a single century than the nobility of surrounding planets had been able to manage in five. Even worse, a peculiar fold in the fabric of local space placed Grenz in a singularly unique position – it received current Alliance EM broadcasts. For this reason, Grenz was the only planet in the Imperial sphere to forbid transistor radios. The ruling family, having made this proclamation in a stirring show of patriotic self-interest, felt free to ignore it themselves.

For the rest of the citizens of Grenz, intra-planet communication became prohibitively expensive. Home-made or smuggled transistor radios flourished despite the heavy punishments they incurred, and enforcement became increasingly impractical. In February 400 the ruling family was forced to make concessions: the ban was revoked, replaced with a set of regulations describing the exact frequencies at which communication was permitted. A state-run factory dedicated to the "production" (actually purchase and alteration) of transmitters and receivers was established. It was headed by the brother of the chief magistrate, who made enormous profits by charging triple prices for ordinary radios with reduced functionality.

At the same time there were harsh penalties for those caught with anything else.

For possession: 10 year sentence, seizure of property  
For manufacture: 20 year sentence, seizure of property  
For smuggling: death, seizure of property

Needless to say the ruling family was quite satisfied with this state of affairs, as were Grenz's (exponentially wealthier) customs officials.

It was with all of this in mind that Rahoul Brangarde, mechanic's son, used to sit with his arms around his knees under a sheet in the attic, watching bad English movies and trying not to sneeze. He'd found what he thought must be the last of the smuggled video sets, tucked under the false bottom of an antique chest along with a spool of lace that came apart in his hands and some money. (Not much – changing currency rates had reduced it to barely enough to buy a wooden replica battle cruiser and some candy.)

Rahoul was seven and old enough to know what his discovery meant. Here was something he wasn't supposed to have. If he told his sister, she'd tell his mother, who would insist it be destroyed before the neighbors found out. Therefore he told no one.

(He was good at keeping secrets. For instance no one ever found out about the battle cruiser, either.)

Rahoul learned English watching game shows and children's programming. Eventually it occurred to him that if he was going to watch only because it was something wasn't supposed to do, he ought to _watch_ the things he wasn't supposed to watch. That meant, he supposed, the political broadcasts. Luckily for Rahoul the Alliance was at this time looking to escalate their eternal war with the Empire, which meant that there were more political broadcasts than usual.

Sitting in his corner of the attic, trying not to sneeze, he'd use his fingers to trace over the broad smiles of the men onscreen. He always watched with one sheet on the floor to avoid the dust and one over his head to avoid letting out the light; and the images would flicker against the sheets in the dark. He kept the volume at its lowest setting. Sometimes the politicians' words were lost to static, but they tended to repeat themselves so Rahoul didn't really mind.

If it was something the High Nobles didn't want him to know, he wanted to know it. This was Rahoul's reasoning, and the reason he eventually came to despise his homeland. In his ignorance he'd hated only the High Nobles of Grenz; now he hated High Nobles in general. At sixteen he joined the Imperial Officer's Corps with the slogans "freedom of choice," "government by the people," and "shackled to the yoke of despotism" at the front of his mind. 

His greatest desire was to work as a spy and saboteur for the Alliance. But how does one become a spy? He wasn't sure. The military seemed a good place to start. Rahoul kept a series of notebooks and filled them with everything he thought might be a military secret. He devised an elaborate decryption system and encoded everything by hand, a laborious process. It was a habit he maintained through four years of study and three of service, during which he was promoted five times. The number of notebooks increased with each promotion; and with each promotion more of what he'd previously written seemed worthless, trivial, common, low-level, something he wouldn't want to waste the Alliance's time with. 

He reached the height of his promotions at Captain. Beyond that he would be expected to deploy troops in large numbers, and Rahoul had no head for strategy. He had a passion for detail that always obscured the over-arching plan.

**June 7, 490.** Weaving though corridors on his way back from a private party; head down and stumble into his room (_his_ room, Captain's room, no roommate thank God for that. Here was one privilege of rank he was not going to protest). Some tea to clear his head. While the pot was brewing, Rahoul stood flipping idly through his notebooks. And realized with a shock that he would never be able to share them. 

This wasn't the insecurity that sometimes ambushed him in the shower or at mess, when he'd _know_ the information he was gathering was useless. It wasn't the creeping guilt he felt when he thought of his platoon, or fleet, and what would happen when he left them. It wasn't the impatience he felt at having served for so many years without the opportunity to defect. It was the realization that his priorities had changed, and he no longer wanted to.

The evening's entertainment caught up with him, and he sat heavily on the edge of his bunk. The notebook fell through his fingers to the floor. _My God,_ he thought. How long have I been this way?

A long time, was the answer that eventually came to him. For the last year you have become more and more a Captain, until it stopped being your role and started being your job. You fit with the Empire.

But this was awful! What about his principles, lovingly hoarded over a decade of childhood secrecy? He still believed in them, he thought – government by the people, popular elections, social mobility. The Empire still didn't have them. Shouldn't this bother him? He'd blame Herr Reinhardt and his reforms, except that they didn't address the fundamentals. He shouldn't have been satisfied with anything less, but he was, and he wanted to know why.

_Because I'm drunk_ was the easy answer. _Because I've been here too long_ was the harder answer and the one he settled on the next morning when he woke up grateful for the pharmacy's anti-hangover pills. But neither satisfied him.

When Raoul was 27, and the first in his squadron to grind Alliance soil beneath his boot -- he hastily moved aside, leaving a space for the rest of his men to disembark behind him –- when he was 27, and on Heinessen, and he looked across the city park to the crowd eying them warily, tiredly from the street, nothing but women and children and old people, then he understood the answer. It was so simple he wondered why he hadn't realized earlier.

_Those broadcasts were never meant for me._

END


End file.
